‘Know thyself’ is a Greek proverb. But what does it mean? How? Something is missing. But she can’t think what it is. Mysterious art dealer Countess Ruby is jailed in Australia for the traumatic murder she cannot recall. In her adopted art-world, high society, life in London, acting the part and role-playing replaced authenticity. Ruby, amnesiac, kept up appearances. Then she and husband Sir Hugo Rivers go to Australia, to collect art. She returns to a past life she forgot. A triangular love affair, Margarita and Raymond, troubled artist; a disappeared friend, love, daughter. What is the meaning of the violinist playing Bach’s Contrapunctus 14 that’s haunting her? Who did what?

Missing (Australian Fugue) tells the same story as The Antipode Room in a faster paced thriller form, and without references to psychogenic fugue from medical books and journals and cultural texts discussed in excerpts from The Writer’s Fugue. Published by PostMistress Press, in 2015; 2016 and 2017. Available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook.

“Know thyself” is a Greek proverb. But what does it mean? Mysterious London art gallerist Ruby is jailed in Australia for the traumatic murder she cannot remember. When is forgetting a healing salve and when is it denial? So you can forget, you first have to remember. The psychological fugue novel is interwoven with art and medical history extracts, as Ruby time travels and revisits the past hoping to find the truth. This novel is interwoven with a series of digital pixel concrete artworks by the author to which the photographic series in companion volume Sayonara Baby-Fragments of Memory Images responds.

A comparative exploration of ideas of creativity, humanity, alienation in modernity, the 'divided self ' and Bakhtin's social life of discourse, and dialogism, now and through the history of fugue and polyphony in music, psychology, medicine, poetry and the novel, with chapters on migrations and adaptations of musical fugue in (now) canonical literary works by authors and poets in modernity: Thomas de Quincey, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Paul Celan, and Sylvia Plath; with studies of present day exiled and emigré poets including expat Australian poet Christopher Barnett in France; and stateless Kurdish author and filmmaker Behrouz Boochani on Manus Island. This edition includes a review of his film Chauka, Please Tell Us the Time. Chapter 1 substantially updates and expands Skilbeck's essay 'Exiled Writers, Human Rights, and Social Advocacy Movements in Australia: A Critical Fugal Analysis" in Cultural Studies of Rights: Critical Articulations (Routledge, 2011; 2014), a special issue of Cultural Studies of Rights: Critical Articulations, Vol. 7, No. 3, Sept 2010.

454 pages ISBN: 9780648398301 ebook-pdf

Second edition (published March 9, 2017) available in hardcover and paperback. First edition (The Writer’s Fugue) in hardcover and ebook.

1980. Adelaide is in the grip of serial killers targeting young people. Roxanne arrives to study arts. She moves into a student house by the beach where artists are pushing the limits of art, love and life. Then housemates start disappearing. A fictional memoir with a backdrop of real events.

Sayonara Baby - fragments of memory images

Published 8 January 2019

A book of 14 artworks by the author, including photomontage, and short excerpts from psychological fugue fiction novels in the Australian Fugue Series, including a poem. The art series responds to a mysterious series of another 14 artworks in The Antipode Room and is presented in the form of a catalogue of an exhibition in The Antipode Room at the (fictional) Ruby Love Gallery.

ISBN: 9780648299875 (ebook-pdf) Artist’s book. 38 pages

Sayonara Baby - fragments of memory images

A book of photo art works by Ruth Skilbeck, and short excerpts from psychological fugue fiction novels in her Australian Fugue Series, including a poem. The art series responds to a mysterious series of pixel concrete artworks in The Antipode Room and is presented in the form of a catalogue of an exhibition in the new gallery space The Antipode Room at the (fictional) Ruby Love Gallery, in London.